The Met Office: Data science in an organisation full of scientists

Met Office CIO Charles Ewen has questioned whether an organisation such as his needs data scientists – when it has hundreds of its own, real scientists to draw on. The Met Office, says Ewen, generates multi-petabytes of data every month, which is analysed by its climate scientists in order to forecast the weather and wider weather patterns. Its analysis goes as far out as deep space, where it is also bidding to determine the influence of “space weather” on the Earth’s own atmosphere and weather patterns. Further reading However, for an organisation as replete with scientists as the Met Office, trained in physics and statistical analysis, it raises the question of whether an organisation that does so much proper science actually needs data scientists? For Ewen, the answer is “yes…